Donnerstag
by Camillo
Summary: Ruth knows more than she lets on. Short chapters pondering series 10 scenes. Heavy on the spoilers.
1. Chapter 1

Short recap piece based on 10.1 because I'm having trouble sleeping.

With any luck, I'll think of stuff to add to this along the way.

All the usual disclaimers apply.

**SERIES 10 SPOILERS**

**Donnerstag**

The Russian Minister for International Development is the focus of an assassination plot. His wife was an MI6 asset in the eighties. Harry Pearce's asset, to be precise.

Ruth knows these things. Having been tasked by Erin to find out everything she can about Elena Gavrik, she briefly speaks to James Coaver. He is an occasional contact when it comes to deeply cryptic information about Al Qaeda – a little while ago, she may even have mentioned a lack of mobile phone usage near a large villa in Pakistan.

Harry met Elena when she lived in East Berlin. He manufactured encounters when she visited Geneva, or Vienna, or Milan ... or whichever European city had the best opera available at the time. Often there were overnight train trips involved. "Chance" encounters in dining cars. Bumping into each other outside the door of her sleeper compartment.

They were obviously sleeping together. For several years. Whilst Harry was still married to Jane. Given prior knowledge of at least two Pearce affairs, the news doesn't come as much of a surprise. What does make Ruth's eyes widen a fraction is the fact that Elena gave birth to a son precisely nine months and seven days after the harshly criticised world premier of _Donnerstag_ at the _Teatro alla Scalla_.

The opera is a lengthy exploration of the Archangel Michael. It premiered without its entire third act because of a dispute with the La Scala chorus over pay. Harry and Elena probably found themselves with an extra half hour to spare.

There are several questions on Ruth's mind. Does he know? Is he planning to tell her? Should she break the news that it has only taken her three hours to yank yet another sizeable skeleton out of his closet?

Does she care?

That's one to ponder.

The situation makes her think of parenthood. Harry has three children and he hasn't had a proper relationship with any of them. She managed a brief stint as a quasi-stepmother, which ended abruptly and disastrously. Clearly, their career does not lend itself to fidelity, reliability or support. But that doesn't mean the spirit isn't willing. Harry must have thought about his little Russian boy, utterly out of reach behind a curtain made of iron. She doesn't have Nico, and he didn't have Sasha.

Yes, she cares.

When he tells her, he doesn't prevaricate, or bluster, or try to shut her out. He doesn't hide the tears, or blame them on the weather.

For the first time since she came back from the dead, Ruth feels one hundred percent alive.


	2. Chapter 2

Lunchtime scribbling. There was a bench scene!

**Series 10 spoilers**

Harry's reaction to the news that she has been offered a job elsewhere is not what she had anticipated. No jealousy or resentment for going behind his back. No snapping at her for talking to the Home Secretary without his permission.

Instead, he tells her to leave the Grid as soon as possible: 'I don't want you involved in what's coming.'

She looks at him for a long moment, swamped with incandescent rage that he's trying to shut her out again. After she more or less begged him to give her a reason to stay. After the implied forgiveness of all his untold secrets – no matter how much she resents the fact that she may never know everything about him. 'Right, then. What _do_ you want me involved in?'

'Making your life better than it is now. Being happy. Being safe.'

'What about you?'

He sighs. 'It's a bit late for me, don't you think? Love on a need-to-know basis, and secrets falling out of my pockets wherever I go.'

'Harry, it _doesn't_ have to be like that.'

'For now it does. Until this thing is decided, it's only going to get worse. Get out, Ruth. Please just take the opportunity you've been given.'

She tilts her head and stares at him with huge, hurt eyes. 'I don't believe this. You'll ask Elena to act as bait in an assassination attempt without batting an eyelid, but at the first chance you get, you pack me off to Whitehall to play nursemaid to the Home Secretary!'

He shifts on the bench to face her properly, expression taut with frustration. 'What's so difficult to understand?'

Her voice sounds mortifyingly querulous to her own ears. 'All of a sudden you need Elena, but you don't need me?'

'I need Elena to find out what the hell is going on. I need you to be okay!'

He doesn't say it, but she can see it in the twitch of his shoulder and the heaviness of his breathing. _I have to protect the people I love. Ergo, I don't love Elena, but I do love you._

'Stupid man,' she repeats, voice softened by insight, endearment adapted from insult. 'What am I going to do with you?'

He bows his head and reaches for her hand. She gives it to him, letting him kiss her palm with gentle reverence. Watching him pour his heart out without saying a single word.


	3. Chapter 3

**SERIES 10 SPOILERS**

Did you see it? Did you see that coat in the hallway?

* * *

><p>She has been dealing with the aftermath of the bomb attack. Press release after press release; reassuring the cabinet; advising the Prime Minister's office as well as the Home Secretary's; liaising with the police and MI5. All the time a drum has been beating away inside her chest: <em>I lost the laptop, I lost the laptop, I lost the laptop. What is on it? What is on it? What is on it?<em>

Just as she is shutting down her computer and putting her coat on, she hears a troubled murmur wafting over from the far corner of the office. She wanders over, casually checking her handbag and patting her hair down. Clearly on her way home, but still helpful if needed.

'Is anything wrong?'

Her colleague looks up with a worried frown. He's the Home Office Advisor on border control, and he is a very clever man indeed. 'We've had an extradition request through. It's for a member of the security services.'

'From?'

'The States.'

It is for Harry, of course. A CIA deputy director dead in Harry's custody, his laptop stolen from the US Embassy, it couldn't be for anyone else. In the circumstances, it's a request that is virtually impossible to decline. To do so would result in the expulsion of every known MI6 employee from America, and an unprecedented chilling of diplomatic relations. The Russian talks have even provided the perfect cover story for such a thing.

She pulls a face at her colleague. 'The bomb means we can delay until morning. Better make sure Towers sees it first thing, though.'

o0o

By the time she arrives, Ilya Gavrik has gone. He left the vodka behind him with a magnanimous smile. The KGB is behind me. I am a politician now. I am happy. I am free. I have a wife, and a son, and a sodding tortoise in the sodding garden. Harry wanted to smack him with the vodka bottle, pour the contents over his head and bellow, "He's my son, and I found love too! And in our case, the feeling is actually mutual! So there!"

He says as much to Ruth, who pours him another whiskey and pours the vodka down the sink (knowing Harry has taught her a thing or two about accepting bottles of alcohol from enemies).

'I stopped at Waitrose and bought fillet steak,' she tells him, steadfastly sticking to the rule they set two months ago: no talking about work in either of their homes. 'I'll cook. Go and get changed.'

The evening is short but blessedly peaceful. They go to bed early, and make quiet love. It is their first night together since the Gavriks arrived in London, and both of them are profoundly happy to have found each other again. The aftermath dissolves into a bout of determinedly sarcastic "no, no, _I_ wuv _you_ more" mutual ridicule, which lasts until Harry falls asleep with a smile on his face.

Ruth does not sleep well. She slips out of bed at dawn and leaves the room with a murmured excuse about needing to get to work early. On his way out of the house three hours later, Harry pauses in the hallway, looks at her coat hanging by the door and retraces his steps to the kitchen. He pours away the last of the milk and chucks the bottle in the recycling. It's a simple message: _I don't think I'm coming back. If you hear I've gone missing, wait three weeks and then check our prearranged email address._


	4. Chapter 4

**SPOILERS FOR 10:6**

Given that I spent years as a fully signed-up member of the "Trust in Snape" contingent, I'm no stranger to being canon-shafted. It's nasty at the time, but I'm of the opinion that when you come to the end of a series it actually provides more inspiration for fic writers than the alternative. What's the point in writing a lengthy alternative universe story in which your favourite pairing finally get their happy ever after if they've _already done it officially?_

The Kudos writers are a bunch of complete c*nts if you're a romantically-minded fan of the tv show, particularly if you're one of the people who spent years composing and sending postcards in the Bring Back Ruth Campaign. However, if you've already slipped over the edge, and into the land of make-your-own-stuff-up-anyway, then things can be okay if you want them to be. To the imaginative fic writer, death really is no obstacle, _especially_ for a series in which coming back to life after your televised funeral is perfectly within the rules ;-)

That said, playing with the tragedy can be cathartic. And this odd little fic seems the right place for me to do it...

* * *

><p>He told her that getting away from the service – from <em>him<em> – and creating some semblance of a normal life would be her crowning achievement.

Standing in a kitchen in Suffolk, staring out of the window at a garden made for two, he realises the utter pointlessness of such a statement. They are twin stars; their mutual gravity is the only force strong enough to keep them steadily orbiting each other, in a quiet galaxy, in a parallel universe somewhere. Here, she would have imploded. She would have collapsed in on herself, the absence of love leaving a black hole in which she would have been destined for oblivion.

oOo

Previously, he had always wondered at the people who stayed in their family homes once the children were gone and the spouse was dead. Why on earth did they subject themselves to such pain? Why didn't they escape to somewhere that didn't continually bathe them in memories?

Now he sits at his desk, listening to the telephone ring. Now he knows that people stay in familiar surroundings, bathing themselves in the memories, because anything else would simply be unbearable.

'_Do you ever find yourself thinking that you can't go on, Ruth?_'

'_Can't go on. Must go on._'

He picks up the phone.


End file.
